Friday, September 7, 2012

It has been another hectic week around here! Between Monday being a holiday and keeping up with assorted doctor's appointments for the kids, I had just enough time to finish planning my entry in Priti Lisa's book and begin painting it! I almost never paint in water color anymore....but today I felt compelled to. And then found it a challenge again and again as I'd get one part perfect and then it would dry funny so I'd fix it only to find that I'd messed up another area...needless to say- I've decided that it is finished enough to move to the next page of her book (she gave us permission to do more than one page so I'm running with it!)
Lisa is a HUGE admirer of Frida Kahlo, so I decided to use that for inspiration....

Note: at this point the ears are REALLY overworked- so that I'm scared to add anymore water color to them- I might go back over them with acrylic so the color is better, or should I just leave them alone?

I don't know if you can tell, but I've trimmed out the bottom of this into a triangle (this was the main reason I wanted to use two pages ;)) and the page behind it will have

a Frida quote so you can see bits and pieces of it beckoning you to turn the page.......

Here it is with the top and bottom- at this time, I'm not planning on doing anything else with the top piece, I kind of like how simple it is right now...but of course, that could change at any time!

And one last peek at Frida before I say farewell for now- have a wonderful weekend and I'll "see" you all soon!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

For our second project in art class, the kiddos and I talked about Henri Matisse and how he often chose to do paintings featuring many patterns in a room centering on a window and the view from it. Maybe we'll do another Matisse inspired project- play with collage like he did too....maybe even pretend to be bedridden? For this project, I had the students explore drawing several patterns and choose 2-3 to create their rooms with. Also, both girls love cats, so I encouraged them to include a feline in their work as well. These projects usually require two 1 1/2 hour classes to complete so they can apply a variety of thought and techniques to create really amazing work.

The first week was all about planning their art and then laying in the patterns with oil pastel. It was important that they get this done the first day so they could do the water color portion the second week and have time to allow it to dry!

The second week was a race to get finished on time- we even had to skip our wiggle break!